Thursday, August 16, 2012

Madonna booed in Paris after 45-minute concert - CBS News

Madonna performs on stage at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam on July 7, 2012.

(Credit: Getty)

(CBS/AP) PARIS - An Madonna concert that the pop star said was intended to celebrate France's tolerance instead tested it, drawing boos and cries of "refund!" from the crowd when she left the stage after just 45 minutes.

The Thursday show, billed as in intimate event Paris' Olympia club, was streamed live on YouTube. By Friday morning, the channel that showed the event disabled comments and had more than 12,000 dislikes compared with 10,000 likes.

An invitation to tweet about the show appeared to backfire - audience members used the suggested hashtag #MDNAParis to complain. The rebroadcast of the show cuts off when Madonna leaves the stage, apparently before the crowd realized the concert was over.

The performance added to the singer's MDNA tour just last week, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Tickets, which started at 80 euros ($98) and were first offered to members of her fan club before being sold to the general public, reportedly sold out within hours.

The show was announced after France's far-right National FrontÂ threatened to sue MadonnaÂ after the singer showed a video at a Bastille Day concert in Paris with an image of the party's leader, Marine Le Pen, with a swastika on her forehead.

"I've heard that a certain Marine Le Pen was upset with me. It's not my intention to make enemies," she told the crowd, according to THR. "It's my intention to promote tolerance. And when we start saying that we have to get rid of this person or we have to get rid of that person, because then we'll have a better place, it starts to sound like something else, it starts to sound like something scary. So the next time you want to point the finger at somebody and blame them for a problem in your life, take that finger and point it back at you."